Embroidery machines use hoops to hold fabric or a garment while the machine design is sewn out. The placement of the design is of utmost importance, but the back, or female, part of the hoop is not visible while the design is being positioned. Therefore, it is always necessary to check and usually necessary to move and rotate the design in the machine after hooping. Some machines provide for incremental movement and rotation and some do not. In either case, however, placing a design in a particular place or at a particular angle in relation to a particular seam or another design that has already been embroidered is a daunting task for the home embroiderer.
Hoops are made as small and light as possible because they and the fabrics or garments must be manipulated by the machine's computer-driven mechanism. Consequently, when fabric or a garment covers a hoop it tends to be dragged about by the friction between it and the fabric unless restrained in some fashion.
Hoop-holding devices abound, primarily designed for commercial or heavy-duty hobby use. Some commercial devices define the position of inner and outer hoops by indexing them with a rigid column such as on a drill press, but they do not define the center of the hoop and they are fixed, large machines. The most common goal of other hoop-holding devices is to fit as many and as varied hoops as possible and to facilitate repetitive placement of the same design. This causes such devices to have a number of removable parts and somewhat complex operation, as well as higher cost. For the person who does occasional home embroidery large, complex, or freestanding machines or loose pegs, cams, screws are not desirable. Such a person seldom needs to position the same design in the same place over and over, and in fact may never position the same design twice, but the need is there to hold the hoop in place so it doesn't move around while the fabric or garment is positioned. Additionally, accurate placement of the design is now dependent on guesswork and further “steering” of the hooped design in the machine. Lastly, because the hardware and software of different brands of machines are rarely interchangeable, home embroiderers tend to own only a single brand of machine, thereby obviating the need for multi-brand-capable devices.
Some existing devices feature an inclined board or raised table, so that a garment can surround the hoop holding device. While this is advantageous, particularly with a heavy garment, it is illusory for the home embroiderer because the garment cannot enter the machine in this configuration but must present only the back face of the surface to receive the design. Consequently, this feature is an unneeded complexity.